BEN DOODY: UConn basketball gives state sense of identity

Updated 10:42 am, Wednesday, April 6, 2011

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Emeka Okafor waves to the crowd with his University of Connecticut men's basketball teammates as they pass outside the Hartford Civic Center during the team's national championship parade in 2004. The Huskies can win their third national championship at Reliant Stadium in Houston with two more victories. less

Emeka Okafor waves to the crowd with his University of Connecticut men's basketball teammates as they pass outside the Hartford Civic Center during the team's national championship parade in 2004. The Huskies ... more

Photo: File Photo

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Maya Moore celebrates during a victory parade for the University of Connecticut women's basketball team in 2009 in Hartford. Coach Geno Auriemma is shown behind Moore. The Huskies won their eight national championship with two victories in Indianapolis on Sunday and Tuesday. (AP Photo/Bob Child) less

Maya Moore celebrates during a victory parade for the University of Connecticut women's basketball team in 2009 in Hartford. Coach Geno Auriemma is shown behind Moore. The Huskies won their eight national ... more

Photo: Contributed Photo/ Bob Childs, Contributed Photo

BEN DOODY: UConn basketball gives state sense of identity

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Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy caused a minor uproar in Connecticut early this week when, in praising UConn Coach Jim Calhoun as a son of Boston, he wrote in an SI.com column that the Huskies are not part of the "New England sports landscape."

The column drew widespread ridicule on Twitter and in the blogosphere, with Nutmeg State pundits proclaiming their distaste for Shaughnessy's Boston elitism. Calhoun, a native of Braintree, Mass., and a former coach at Northeastern, was the focus of the column because of his Boston connections.

Shaughnessy pointed out that the Huskies don't get Duckboat parades when they win titles -- drawing widespread backlash from people tweeting and blogging that UConn is kind of a big deal, regardless of how infrequently it's featured in The Boston Globe.

But "New England sports landscape" or not, UConn -- whose men's and women's teams are both playing in the Final Four this weekend -- has given Connecticut something that other northeastern states lack: a state identity centered around sports.

Let's be clear: Connecticut isn't and probably never will be Kentucky, North Carolina or Indiana, where the State U. men's hoops program is the topic of conversation on dinner tables statewide in good times and bad.

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A co-worker once relayed a story to me from a friend living in Lexington, Ky., -- home to the University of Kentucky, the UConn men's opponent in Saturday's national semifinal at Reliant Stadium in Houston. So pervasive is Wildcat Fever, my co-worker said, that it's not uncommon for elderly women to offer an intelligent take on which high school juniors the Wildcats should target.

That doesn't happen in Connecticut. Despite the meteoric rise of the Huskies' men's and women's programs, it's possible -- sometimes even easy -- to get a ticket to most regular-season games. (When the UConn women hosted the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament and drew sparse crowds at Gampel Pavilion, Coach Geno Auriemma drew national headlines when he scolded fans for being too spoiled to come out and support the team).

It's also no secret that Huskymania is a condition far more often experienced in the central and eastern parts of the state than it is in Stamford and Greenwich. Even within Fairfield County, folks dressed in national flag blue and white are more often found in Danbury -- where Interstate 84 provides easy access to Hartford and Storrs -- than in Greenwich.

But thanks largely to UConn, Connecticut is unique among northeastern states in the extent to which the state rallies behind its flagship university and its athletic programs.

In Massachusetts, just about everyone roots for the Red Sox. But aside from UMass alumni, you'll have a hard time finding someone in Greater Boston who can even correctly pronounce the city in which the Minutemen play. (The "h" in Amherst, unbeknownst to most Bostonians, is silent).

Rhode Islanders take pride in being "the biggest little state in the union," but none of that pride revolves around URI.

In New York, Syracuse -- a private school -- is the closest thing to a team that gets statewide recognition.

Even in New Jersey, where the Rutgers football team has risen to prominence over the last five years, there's a far bigger divide between the New York-centric fans in North Jersey and those in the Philadelphia suburbs, for whom Rutgers' Piscataway campus seems a lifetime away.

But if you go to a game at the XL Center, Gampel or Rentschler Field, you're bound to see fans in Red Sox and Yankees hats -- but both with UConn T-shirts -- sitting side-by-side, cheering for UConn regardless of on which side of the Munson-Nixon line they may fall.

Huskymania still hasn't fully caught on in the southwestern-most tip of Fairfield County, but interest is on the rise -- in part, perhaps, because of the dramatically increased role Stamford and Greenwich have played in state politics.

On Friday, Malloy sent a press release proclaiming "Husky Weekend" throughout the state -- a corny declaration, to be sure, but one not certain to be issued in less hoops-savvy states.

Malloy, of course, isn't the only politician from Fairfield County to enthusiastically leap onto the Huskies' bandwagon.

The day after Kemba Walker hit a buzzer-beating jump shot to send the UConn men past Pittsburgh in the Big East tournament quarterfinals, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D, 4th district) -- a Greenwich resident -- tweeted that Huskymania had overtaken his office.